That abled athletes can keep their muscles warm with a heated sports pants has been known for a while since Gerbing made electrical heated sports trousers for the very succesfull TeamNL in Sochi 2014. New is that also the paralympic compound and recerve archers are getting support from Gerbing.
“When we are outside on the 70 and 50 meter shooting range, a lot of athletes are freezing” says Pier Elzinga, Dutch coach from the Dutch Archer federation. “We have been looking around for a while, and we ended up at the Dutch Olympic Commitee NOC*NSF. They told us about how Gerbing made a heated sports pants for the excelling Dutch olympic winter team in Sochi”.
“We are happy that we as paralympic recurve and compound archers, can help to develope heated trousers for less abled persons”, says Phillip Bottomley, who ended fourth at the Paralympics in London 2012. “The first improvements have already been made to change the current 12 volt heated pants that Gerbing already has in it’s catalogue. Because we are sitting all day, we can’t sit on something hard. This can cause enormous injuries, which can take us out of competition for months. The solution made by Gerbing was to change the power lead inside the heated trousers”.
“The first time we felt the heat of the heated trousers powered by a powerfull 12V Lithium battery, we were enormously surprised by the heat output”, says compound archer Ingrid Peijer. “We can’t wait to start training outside with the final version of the heated trousers. During the colder months we shoot inside at the 18 meter range, where the actual competition is at the 50 or 70 meter range.You can imagine that if we can train more outside, the chances of winning a medal in Rio 2016 will improve. And in the top sport all details counts, so this might be a winning detail”.
“It’s too bad we can’t shoot with a pair of heated gloves”, says Pier Elzinga smiling. “But happy we as coaches can use the 7 volt heated vest. This will help us tackle the biggest cold, because if you heat the core, it will increase the blood supply to the end of the body: hands and feet.